


Just because I let you go, doesn't mean I wanted to

by CSIGurlie07



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Eventual Lena/Sam, Experimental Format, F/F, If I have to suffer through this concept, Not a character death, Sorry Not Sorry, Still very much supercorp focused, a lot different from my usual stuff, break up fic, so do the rest of you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-08 16:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12868074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CSIGurlie07/pseuds/CSIGurlie07
Summary: Lena finds happiness in Kara, but that doesn't guarantee a happy ending.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm testing out a new story format. I'm not sure how I like it, as it feels a little unnatural compared to my normal style, so please please please tell me what you think! Let me know what works, and what doesn't-- even a good/bad note would be helpful at this point.

_"The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it, some stories just don't have a happy ending." -- Jodi Picoult_

* * *

 

Lena should be happy. Happy, in an objective, empirical sense. The way the sky is blue and gravity keeps her planted on the ground.

She has everything she wants. She has Kara. She has Supergirl. Lex remains in prison, and Cadmus has been silent for months. Even Edge is on his way to a conviction-- turns out it’s harder to cover your tracks when your intended scapegoat wins the battle for National City's trust. L-Corp is finally succeeding as a force for good. It’s more than Lena ever hoped for.

It should be enough.

She has moments of happiness. Pure, unadulterated happiness. When she and Kara curl up on the couch at night; when Kara surprises her with lunch; when Kara emerges from her bathroom after changing into her comfiest sweatpants. Every time arms wrap around her, Lena basks in unequivocable bliss.

Until it happens.

A phone rings, a siren calls, and Kara disappears with a smile and a promise to be right back. Sometimes she is. Fifteen minutes, and she's back in Lena's arms with windswept hair and coffees for both of them. Sometimes it's hours, or days. Once was more than a week, and a note from Alex about trans-dimensional travel.

Nothing is safe from emergency. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, casual friday or their anniversary, in their kitchen or at a Michelin star restaurant... Lena starts to think there isn't a single inch of this city where she hasn't been left on the outside of a crisis.

Sometimes Kara pauses to make sure Lena is all right with her leaving. Lena smiles and nods, but she never has to hold it longer than a heartbeat before Kara whooshes out of sight. 

That's where it starts.

* * *

It's not Kara's fault. It's not. Lena knew her secret long before they ever tried dating, and knew going in what to expect. But expecting and knowing don't prepare her for living a life of coming second.

It's selfish to want more, and the last selfish Luthor was Lex. Lena wants nothing to do with it, and she tamps it down, shoves it out of sight and out of mind, doing her damnedest to convince herself it had never been there at all. It works, but not for long.

When her smile lags one night on Supergirl's way out the door, Kara pauses. A crinkle forms in her brow, and a hand presses on Lena's in concern. 

Lena pastes her smile back on, and deflects in a voice too bright to be natural.

It feels like a poor acting job, but Kara either buys it or doesn’t have time to ask further because she disappears a moment later. She returns at the crack of dawn and falls into bed with a happy hum, smelling of soot and sweat. Lena pretends not to wake.

* * *

Looking back, that night is the tipping point. The point where the anger and resentment starts refusing to be boxed away, and things start to add up. First, when Kara slips out of bed in the middle of the night, she leaves a Supergirl-sized pocket of frozen air at Lena’s back. Then, during the day, Lena’s guards crack a little further when their lunch in her office is interrupted by a call from Snapper Carr. Lena can't blame it on Supergirl this time, but it’s a bitter pill to realize that a cretin like Snapper Carr has more access to Kara than she does.

Lena forgets to cherish.

Her moments of happiness turn sour, tainted by the expectation that the moment won’t last. Instead of counting the minutes she counts them down, waiting for the universe to prove her right. It always does.

A part of her blames Kara, but not for the interruptions. She’s a hero. Heroes do what heroes do, and Lena has no intention of asking Kara to stop being the hero she is. But it was Kara who set out to remind Lena what it is to live. To not only want happiness, but believe that she deserves it. She does too good a job of it.

It's all her fault, really.

* * *

Kara doesn't notice the change that Lena feels, and that makes it worse. Lena starts a game of sorts, to see how much her mask has to slip before that eyebrow crinkle comes back. It takes more than Lena expects, and it burns in her throat like acid. Eventually, she stops hiding at all.

The final time dinner is interrupted, Lena doesn't smile. She doesn't make eye contact. She doesn't answer Kara's apology mumbled around a mouthful of pizza.

_That_ gets Kara's attention.

"Lena?"

Lena's throat locks tight, and in that moment, the anger that churns in her gut shifts abruptly to hurt. The kind that reaches deep into Lena's chest and clamps a fist around her heart.

_"Just go."_

Kara does. Lena sits alone on the couch for long moments, adjusting to the way the room suddenly tilts into a brand new orientation around her. It steals her breath, leaves her reeling, and in its wake her chest feels hollow.

Then, she rises. She dumps her half-eaten pizza in the trash and rinses her plate. When Lena turns away from the sink, she faces an empty apartment, dark and silent.

She waits.

A piano lives next to the fireplace, and though she knows how to play, she has yet to use this one since moving to National City. For the first time, Lena sits on the bench and runs her hands over the ivory keys. They find the middle C position, and her fingers curve in muscle memory, finding familiar homes against the keys. The first, single note she plays floats chillingly in the air, and sounds so foreign Lena shuts the lid without playing a single measure.

She’s still sitting on the bench when the curtains billow an hour later, and suddenly Kara stands in the middle of the living room, arms wrapped around her middle, tucking under cape.

_How odd_ , Lena thinks when she sees her, _that the Girl of Steel could look so vulnerable._

Kara stares at the toes of her boots, stiff as a board. The infamous crinkle furrows her brow. She can barely meet Lena’s eyes, but when she does, her gaze is at once both soft and adamantine.

"Are we okay?"

Holding Kara’s gaze, it feels like the first time they’ve seen each other in weeks. Lena takes calm, measured breaths, and let's her fingers trail along the piano lid.

"No."

* * *

They go away the following weekend. Not far. Close enough that Kara can fly back to National City if Supergirl is needed, but distant enough that no wailing sirens or calls for help can distract them. Finally, they talk.

“I love you Lena,” Kara says. “More than anything.”

Lena nods as the mug of tea in her hands slowly cools, unsipped. A blanket covers her knees, and Kara sits on the other end of the couch, shoulders hunched and features dark.

"I believe that." The truth grinds like glass in her throat. "I do, and part of me can't understand how that isn't enough."

Kara doesn't respond. The cabin around them is silent, the quiet interrupted only by the rustle of trees outside blowing in the wind. It would be peaceful, if not for the world imploding inside.

"I’ve fought tooth and nail for every happiness,” Lena continues, breathless from an invisible pressure building in her chest. “And with you it feels like I’m still fighting.”

“If I ever--”

“No. It’s not your fault.” And it isn’t. “But Kara… it’s a fight I’ll never win.”

Kara looks at her, throat working soundlessly as she searches for words. “You’ve… been unhappy.”

It’s not a question, nor a realization, and in that moment Lena realizes that Kara had noticed all along. She just hasn’t said anything. The intense pressure in Lena’s chest inexplicably eases. With her newfound breath, Lena merely smiles. It’s almost laughable.

National City’s most powerful women, both of them cowards.

“I want more,” she says finally, infinitely more sure of herself now that the tightness is gone. “I want broken plans to be the exception, not the rule. And I want to be able to resent those broken plans and be hurt by them without feeling guilty for wishing my girlfriend were with me instead of saving lives. I want to come first.”

Her name spills from Kara, sharp and ragged. “ _Lena…”_

“I’m not asking you to stop. Supergirl may be what you do, but she’s also part of who you are. To give her up means cutting off a piece of yourself. Even if you could do it, I wouldn’t want that.”

“She doesn’t have to be everything.”

Lena doesn’t have to counter that. She looks at Kara, really looks, and knows that it’s lip service. She knows that Kara knows. Lena responds anyway, driving home the final nail in their coffin.

“If that were true, we wouldn’t be here.”

* * *

They split on a Tuesday morning.

It’s not the ideal solution, but Lena has a conference call with overseas investors that promises to run late, and Kara’s commitment even to that time is contingent on her not receiving a call about the DEO’s latest quarry.

Kara collects her things at human speed, silently boxing her books, and clothes and movies pile high into a plastic box, which she stages next to the front door. Kara then joins Lena in the kitchen, sharing a final cup of their favorite coffee.

“The multiverse is real, you know,” Kara tells her. It’s the first words she’s spoken all morning. Lena hums around the rim of her coffee cup. A lump has lived in her throat since they left the cabin, but her eyes are dry. “The theory is that there’s an infinite number of universes beyond our own, existing at different frequencies.”

Lena nods. She’s familiar.

“Maybe on one of those infinite earths, there’s a world where we get our happy ending.”

* * *

Lena almost doesn't go to Kara's to collect her things. She could easily replace anything lost, and her heart feels numb to any sense of sentimentality. But to leave them there would imply her presence in Kara's life had meant nothing to her, and that's not true.

Kara is the best thing that's ever happened to her. So she goes, and at a time Kara might be there. When Lena unlocks the door, Kara’s apartment is empty.

Her nose burns slightly in disappointment, but tears never come. The dam holds. Later, she sees the news report about a pile up on the freeway.

Supergirl saves eight lives.

* * *

It takes less than a week for relief to shift into doubt. Lena picks up her phone a dozen times to text Kara before she remembers. With dry eyes she renames Kara's number in her phone as "do not contact - k".

She saves their text conversations to her personal cloud on the L-Corp server, then deletes them from her phone. She does the same with their emails. The stack of CatCo magazines featuring Kara's articles (both about Lena and not), tuck away into the locked filing cabinet in her home office.

None of it erases the Kara-sized black hole threatening to swallow her whole, but it eases the relentless gravity until she can breathe again.

* * *

Lena always knew in the back of her mind that Kara would get their friends in the divorce. It doesn't prepare her for the reality of it. Returning to the solitude she’d once been so accustomed to feels like a physical blow. She tells herself Kara needs them more than she does.

The knock on her apartment door almost a month after the break up comes as a surprise.

The door opens onto Maggie Sawyer, fresh off a shift.

"Alex told me what happened," Maggie says. Her smile is one of someone who gets it.

Lena exhales at the sight of her, thin and ragged as the dam finally cracks. That night, she cries. She cries and cries, and Maggie holds her until the well runs dry. Maggie understands.

Maggie knows what it means to not be enough for a Danvers.

* * *

Two months after that, the next knock on Lena's door surprises her at work, and on a Saturday. Her visitor lets himself into her office fumbling three board games and a six-pack of their favorite brand of cream soda.

"Get ready to have your ass kicked in Scrabble," Winn announces with a grin. "I've been practicing!"

Coming in today was a much to kill time as anything else, so Lena locks her computer and rises to her feet as Winn precariously deposits his burdens on the coffee table. Her arms warp around him when he straightens and turns, capturing him in a hug that edges on desperation.

She's never been one to initiate physical contact with anyone but Kara, so he freezes in surprise for half a second before he returns it whole-heartedly. Neither of them say anything, but Winn's presence and the low hum in his throat as he squeezes her tight both say the same thing.

They're still friends.

"All right, young padawan," Lena says, pulling away and clearing her throat. She rubs her hands together. "Let us see if you have surpassed the master."

The gleam in Winn's eye as they settle in to play is proof that he missed her almost as much as she misses them.

* * *

The first time Supergirl needs her help feels like a kick to the gut. Supergirl is curt as she explains the situation, emphasizing that all they need is one of L-Corp's prototypes. Still, after earning Lena's promise to help, she lingers. Lena watches her, sees the way her lips part as if to say something before Supergirl clicks her jaw shut and vanishes off the balcony.

She takes the all the air in the room with her.

* * *

Supergirl returns when it’s all over, but this time the superhero persona has softened back into the Kara that Lena knew so well. "Thank you for helping."

Lena smiles, and it feels honest. "Of course."

"It was... good to see you."

Lena nods.

"Do you think... maybe, we could still be friends?"

It'll never be like how it was before-- they were never just friends, not really. Even from the start, there was the undercurrent of something more. Lena finds herself nodding anyway.

"I'd like that.”

* * *

Lena survives another month. And another. Her friendship with Kara peaks with the occasional coffee date, but time and coffee work their magic. The ache of loss lifts enough to open Lena’s life by fractions.

Almost a year after she cleaves her world in two, Lena meets Sam Arias.

Sam accepts her invitation to dinner with a nervous enthusiasm that echoes in Lena’s own chest. Lena feels shaky and uncertain, skittish as a fawn. She used to do this in her sleep, this shameless flirtation. Now it leaves her hands shaking. Still, she can't ignore the tiny seeds of hope that start to take root when Sam steps out to take her arm on the night of their first date.

This time, Lena knows what she wants. She deserves to find it. Kara taught her that.

Their night passes in a blur of laughter, food, and a good-night kiss that leaves a permanent flutter in Lena's stomach.

Lena finds she doesn’t mind it one bit.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone to gave me feedback on Chapter 1!!! It definitely helped me shape Chapter 2 as I wrote it, and it feels way more consistent than it originally was. You guys are amazing and I love you.
> 
> Now, here, have some more feels.

_"There are no happy endings._   
_Endings are the saddest part,_   
_So just give me a happy middle_   
_And a very happy start."_

_\-- Shel Silverstein_

* * *

 

Kara doesn’t notice right away. It’s a struggle to see past her own happiness to realize that Lena, maybe, _isn't_. But even then, she doesn't say anything.

At first, Kara trusts that Lena will come to her when she’s ready. Or she hopes it’ll go away. Maybe she knows it’s something she can’t fix. Maybe she clings to the dwindling days, clutching at smoke until all the wisps have gone.

Lena lets the final remnants of her mask fall, and the apathy in its wake plunges into Kara’s heart like a Kryptonite blade.

She says Lena’s name like a question, knowing what’s coming and hoping Lena will change her mind. She doesn't.

That’s the trouble with stalling-- when they finally talk, Lena is already done.

* * *

There's still love between them. The following weekend at the cabin proves it, when Lena goes out of her way to avoid laying blame. It's more than Kara feels she deserves.

Alex waits in Kara’s apartment Sunday afternoon. "How did it go?"

As if the fact Kara enters alone isn't answer enough.

Kara takes her time hanging her coat on the hook. Then she removes her scarf, and hangs that up too. She squares her purse on the bench, arranges her keys just so.

"It’s done."

Her voice is calm: no blame, no anger. Not even hurt, just-- fact.

Simple, certain. Final.

Alex responds with a hug, and pulls out the ice cream. When she leaves, Kara takes to the sky. She doesn't come down again until dawn.

* * *

Kara thinks she's prepared for the vacancy of Lena in her life. She isn't.

She's not ready for her cell phone to lay silent most of the day. She's not prepared to lose the little thoughts that used to vibrate her phone at odd times throughout the day, which meant nothing to Lena and everything to Kara. She’s not prepared for her heart to lift every time the phone rings, only to plummet when the number on the screen is James, or Alex.

Kara’s not ready to get back her favorite sweatshirt, or for it to smell like Lena still. It’s a shock to her system, and it cracks through the shell of acceptance that’s engulfed her.

Kara freezes in a bloom of Lena's perfume, and starts to cry.

* * *

She doesn’t have to tell the others. They sense something is different. Maybe they’ve sensed the end coming for as long as Kara has. Maybe, like her, they’d been waiting for the inevitable.

Lena hasn't come to a group event in weeks, so the first game night after the split shouldn’t feel any different. But it does. The boys are just a little more careful, and Alex is a little more watchful. It’s just more reminders: when she runs her fingers over Lena’s favorite gamepiece; when they pair off for pictionary and Kara loops her arm through Alex’s; when Kara realizes that Alex has pulled out the wine glasses with Kara's and Lena's names etched on them, picked up from a promotional wine tasting event.

Pizza curdles in her stomach. Kara leaves early, even though it's her apartment. It doesn't matter.

Nothing matters.

* * *

"Hey." James stops by her desk a week after game night. "Let's have lunch."

Kara doen’t bother to look up. "I'm busy."

"And I'm your boss. Take a break."

His tone leaves no room for argument without making a scene, and after snapping at Tess earlier, Kara knows any more attention will raise even more eyebrows, so she goes.

She slumps in her chair at Noonan’s like she's still a teenager. She waits for James to say whatever meaningful advice he intends, and picks at her burger as the seconds tick by.

"I'm sorry," is all he says.

Kara huffs. "Please. Like you didn't just barely tolerate her."

"It doesn't matter what I thought of her,” James returns, voice gentle and understanding and soft. “She made you happy. I'm sorry that you're hurting."

Kara glares at her shredded hamburger, and swallows another catty comment.

Then, suddenly, she’s fighting tears. James reaches across the table and covers her hand with his. He doesn't say anything else.

* * *

Winn is uncomfortable, in the way that kids from broken homes sometimes are. He does his best to avoid mentioning Lena or L-Corp or dating or anything that could come close to triggering Kara, and so shuts down almost completely. They barely speak for two weeks.

He only relaxes when Kara makes a dedicated effort to smile, at least around him, and for a few weeks things almost feel normal. Then, suddenly, he clams up again. It doesn't take long to learn why.

"I went to see Lena,” he blurts as they’re waiting for J’onn’s order to commence a mission. He avoids eye contact and rubs the back of his neck nervously.

“Not that you need to know, you know, about what I do in my off hours. And it’s not like I need your permission, since I'm not choosing sides, or anything. Lena's my friend! And so are you! I mean, we're all friends, right? We’re just not… friends... together… anymore."

Winn's right.

Winn is Lena's friend, and Kara tells herself the knot in her stomach isn't jealousy. She isn't jealous that Winn can just walk back into Lena's life as if nothing has changed. Kara also tells herself she’s glad, and at least that much is true. Choosing to surrender a losing battle shouldn't leave Lena as lonely as she'd been when she'd first come to National City.

There's no response Kara can give that doesn't sound like permission or forgiveness, so with nothing to allow or absolve, she gives Winn's shoulder a squeeze as J’onn enters the room with the go signal. If anything, she supposes it’s gratitude.

Lena deserves a friend like Winn.

* * *

Christmas is the hardest. A stockpile of small, meaningful gifts sits unwrapped in the deepest corner of her closet, collected for Lena over the past year. They catch her eye when she digs around for wrapping paper and the sight of them rips the healing scar wide open again.

Through Alex, she hears that Eliza is coming for Christmas. Kara isn’t unhappy to hear it, but she dreads the sympathetic touches and the meaningful glances her adoptive mother's presence promises. She’s done it all before, and isn’t interested in an encore.

Barry opens a portal into her living room on Christmas Eve begging for help. Kara goes with him without a second thought.

* * *

Landing on Lena’s balcony feels foreign, though once upon a time it was as natural as breathing. Though she's only there on behalf of the DEO, she feels anything but professional.

White hot rage sparks in her chest, at the sight of Lena standing tall and proud in her office. Kara keeps to the details, unable to keep the bite from her tone and still Lena smiles, promising to help. She’s comfortable and at ease in her own skin and it becomes more prominent with every passing second.

Kara hates it. This is the Lena she fell in love with, which Kara now realizes hasn't been seen in years.

Lena was hurting long before she ever let it show.

* * *

The device proves invaluable, and its creator haunts Kara’s thoughts throughout the hunt for their escaped Valeronian. Lena’s smile glimmers behind her eyes as she replays the office visit over and over and over again. She hates that she hesitated before leaving, shown even the tiniest fraction of weakness.

She’d come so close to apologizing. To the restored Lena standing tall in her office, for being the thing that suffocated the light in her. But when her breath had caught in her throat, Lena’s eyes had sparkled with something almost recognizable. Had Kara imagined that flicker of hope?

For all that Lena seemed well-rested and unburdened… maybe the separation hadn’t been any easier on her.

Who said it had to be all or nothing? Why had a break-up automatically translated into complete isolation? They had been friends once. Best friends. Maybe they can still get back to that.

When she asks, Kara’s heart pounds so loud she's certain even Lena could hear it.

When Lena accepts, it starts to sing.

* * *

Their path back to friendship starts with the occasional coffee at Noonan's. Then it stays there.

Still, it's enough.

* * *

Kara learns about Sam Arias through the tabloids. Some intuitive paparazzo catches her leaving a fancy restaurant on Lena's arm, and National City erupts into a joyful frenzy.

It’s a good thing, Kara tries to convince herself. Lena deserves to be happy, and Kara's glad that National City chooses to celebrate the budding romance rather than tearing it apart.

On their next coffee date, Lena arrives with a smile on her face. A fresh one curls her lips on the way out as she types out a text. Kara doesn’t ask; she waits for Lena to share the news herself.

Lena never does.

* * *

Six months after the happy scandal erupts, a new crisis splashes across the headlines:

**_Lex Luthor Escapes From Prison_ **

Supergirl tries to convince Lena to go into hiding. She really should have known better.

"I didn't let fear make my decisions the first time he tried to kill me, or the second," Lena all but barks as she meets Supergirl glare for glare. "I'm not about to start now."

They settle on a compromise of DEO protection agents at her apartment building and at L-Corp, and the understanding Supergirl would perform irregular fly-bys at each location throughout the day.

Lena's sole concern is Sam-- her brand-new, very public vulnerability.

Sam proposes the solution for that: she’ll stay with Lena until Lex is found. Kara notices it’s not much of an imposition; Lena agrees readily. Kara nods her acceptance, and pretends not to notice the flush rising to Lena’s cheeks as her eyes flash between Sam and Supergirl. 

After weeks of silence from Lex, neither of Kara's wards make any noise about returning to their previous living arrangements. Supergirl fulfills her duty and makes frequent passes of L-Corp and Lena’s penthouse. She deliberately avoids focusing too sharply on the vague shapes of Lena and Sam within Lena’s home, and instead looks for irregularities. Bombs, dispersal mechanisms, hidden visitors lying in wait… Nothing appears. Nothing happens.

* * *

One night during the third week, Kara makes her second pass of the penthouse, and slows at the sound of a cell phone buzzing against Lena's marble countertop.

Glancing through the walls, Kara sees Lena at the stove, stirring several pots simmering away.

"Sam, honey?" she calls, voice lifting to project deeper into the apartment. "Your phone's ringing! Do you need to get it?"

Sam emerges from the bedroom in a satin night gown and barely glances at the incoming number before wrapping her arms around Lena's waist from behind, tucking her chin against a pale neck.

"It's only work," Sam responds, punctuating each sentence with a kiss. "It can wait."

* * *

Two months later, Lex still hasn't made his move. Certain that he has lost interest in his baby sister, the DEO lifts the protective detail, and reassigns the agents to the general search. Against her better judgement, Kara's fly-bys go down to once a day as her focus is needed elsewhere.

Since the news of her brother's escape broke, Lena has kept a low profile. She’s given no speeches and hosted no events, puts her name on nothing that could be seen as a target. When she accepts an invitation to the governor’s ball, she assumes being a simple guest will be protection enough.

Supergirl gets there too late.

The gunfire ceases abruptly just as Kara slams through the ceiling and cracks the marble floor under her boots. She counts three gunmen being grappled to the ground by event security. Screams fill the air around her as the tang of gunsmoke stabs Kara’s sinuses, every sensation clamoring for her attention.

She closes her eyes, and listens for the one heartbeat she’ll never forget.

"Help! Somebody help me, please!"

Kara's senses snap to Sam's shriek in an instant, finding her half-hidden behind a draped table near the bandstand. For split second Kara assumes she’s injured, before she realizes Sam isn’t on her hands and knees-- she’s applying pressure to the gunshot wound in Lena’s chest.

The rest of the room snaps out of existence as Kara zips to Lena’s other side.

In a blink Kara kneels on Lena's other side in a forest of legs running for safety.

 _"Sam..."_ Lena's voice is coarse, grinding her throat as she coughs weakly. _"Go, please..."_

"No!" Sam's voice turns shrill, trembling. "I'm here, baby, I'm right here, just keep talking to me…”

Kara scans Lena from head to toe, and spots a second bullet lodged near near Lena’s hip, and the path of a third that passed through just below her ribs. Blood drains through the hole in her back, spreading outwards to soak Sam’s gown and stain the knees of Kara’s boots.

Sam doesn’t realize she’s there until Kara adds her hands to the pressure on Lena’s chest wound. She can’t see the bullet-- only Lena’s heart, beating frantically to compensate for the increasing blood loss.

As soon as their hands touch, Sam jolts. "Supergirl! Please, help!”

Kara pulls herself back into business mode, and meets Sam's gaze. "Are you hurt?"

"N-no. She pushed me behind the table. Why-- why did you do that, Lena? They were after _you!_ ”

Looking into glassy green eyes, Kara understands what Sam has yet to fathom.

Heroes do what heroes do.

"Please," Sam begs, tears carving pink tracks across bloodstained cheeks. "Please, you have to save her."

Casting her senses out, Kara listens for the emergency response vehicles. Several are already en route, but none close enough to help Lena, whose chest rattles with every shallow breath she struggles to take.

Kara swallows, and nods. "I can't carry you both."

Sam retracts her hands. "G-go. Please save her--"

Lena is in her arms before Sam finishes speaking, and Kara blasts off as quickly as she dares. Sam’s sobs fall away behind her, mingling with the pandemonium of officers speaking loudly into their comms and guests calling for help and crying out in fear and alarm.

In the air, Lena moans.

“It’s okay, you’re going to be okay.”

Green eyes roll behind pale lids, struggling to focus. “K-- k--”

Lena chokes on the blood that slowly fills her left lung. Droplets spatter against Kara’s cheek just as her boots hit concrete once more. At her frantic call, a team of nurses peel away from an ambulance that’s just arrived, and jump into action at the sight of the body sagging in Supergirl’s arms.

“Help! I need help over here!”

* * *

She can’t stay. As soon as the medical team whisks Lena into a trauma room, Kara feels the the phantom tug pulling her back to the gala. In her ear, Alex asks for a sitrep, and Kara struggles to find the voice to respond. Her eyes burn, and her vision waros tremulously before Kara registers the curious gazes of the other ER occupants suddenly glued to her.

Supergirl draws herself up and flies back out the ER doors. She touches back down in the ballroom, creating a second sizeable dent in her haste. Pausing just long enough for Sam to register her intent, Kara gathers her up and deposits her outside the emergency room’s visitor entrance.

“Lena’s inside,” she explains, bracing Sam until she catches her balance. “She needs you.”

Tears glint in the hospital's exterior lights as Sam straightens her spine, and her chin lifts as she nods.

"Thank you, Supergirl."

* * *

Much like the gang that had once attacked an L-Corp charity gala, Lex's gunmen die suspiciously within twenty-four hours of their arrest. Their loss surprises no one.

They had no information to give, to details to spill. They were throwaways: no-name hitmen of no particular skill, paid an exorbitant amount of money to kill just one person.

Lena survives in increments.

* * *

She survives surgery.

 

 

She survives the first night.

 

 

She survives the second.

 

Kara receives updates through comms from Alex, who learns from Winn, who keeps Sam company as much as he can. He brings her food, changes of clothes, magazines she doesn’t read.

Sam doesn’t leave the hospital for a moment.

On the third day, the doctors let her back to see Lena, confident that Lena’s condition is stable enough for it.

The next day, Lena’s vitals unexpectedly drop, and Sam is shepherded back to the waiting room as a swarm of nurses converge on Lena’s room. Moments later, they whisk her back into surgery.

Lena survives the day. And the next.

On the eighth day, when Kara is on her way to the Fortress to use the onboard scanners to search for a trace of Kryptonite anywhere on the planet, Winn hails her.

Lena woke up.

* * *

Lillian may have kept the secret of Supergirl’s identity from Lena, but she had no such compunctions about telling Lex. That’s what Kara learns when they trace their Kryptonite signature to one of LuthorCorp's defunct facilities in a remote region of Russia, the day after Lena wakes up.

Lex targeted Lena not because of his sister’s pro-alien activity, but because he knew her injury would distract the Girl of Steel from his plans. He knows Supers, after all. He knows how loyal they are. He knows how _attached_ they get.

He thinks Kara will be glued to Lena’s bedside. He believes that the hospital's walls and thousands of miles between them will protect him.

Lex still wears his war suit, just in case-- a Luthor always considers his contingencies. He thinks it’ll protect him from her, as it protected him from Superman.

He's wrong.

 _It’s not his fault_ , Kara snarls to herself as her fist plunges through the windscreen of his armor. He’s been in prison for years. He clearly didn’t get the memo: Clark is no longer the champion of Earth.

He doesn't know that the rage Lex never found in Clark had found its home in her, and fuels Kara into being faster, better _, stronger._

Kara almost smiles when Lex’s smug smile melts into terror as he realizes his miscalculation.

Almost.

* * *

Kara watches the sun rise from the window of Lena’s hospital room. Her lips mouth the words of the Kryptonian prayer for hope, but the majority of her attention is focused on the pulse of air rushing through the the canula threaded under Lena’s nose, and the steady pulse of the blood in her veins.

She hears Lena’s journey to wakefulness several minutes before Lena manages to open her eyes.

Green eyes blearily settle on blue as Kara comes to stand at her bedside.

“Hey,” Kara murmurs. Lena blinks at her, slow and just shy of focused. “We got him.”

“Knew… you would…”

Lena’s breath is metered by shallow breaths, raspy from the tube they pulled out of her throat the day before. Kara offers her a thin smile. “You gave us quite a scare.”

For a moment, Lena’s eyes close as though she’s fallen back asleep, before she pries them open again and with considerable effort rolls her head to the side, drinking in the sight of Sam curled up in the uncomfortable hospital recliner next to her bed.

Kara’s lips thin into a smile. “She never left. Not for a second.”

Pale lids slide shut, and Lena’s brow wrinkles as her chest heaves, twisting her face into a grimace. Kara instinctively steps forward, one hand curling around Lena’s while the other reaches up to stroke tangled hair. A tear squeezes from the corner of Lena’s eye, and Kara wipes it away with a thumb.

“She… okay…?”

Every word seems to pull at Lena’s chest. The heart monitor starts to pick up in distress, and Kara rubs her thumb across the back of her knuckles in soothing circles.

“She’s fine, I promise. Not a scratch.”

The heart monitor relaxes back into an easier rhythm. Another tear breaks free, this time in relief as Lena meets Kara’s gaze. “Thank you…”

Kara tries to smile, but instead she feels her own expression twist. Hot tears come welling to the surface unbidden, and her chest burns as she attempts to remain quiet.

“Lena, I’m so sorry...” The hoarse whisper scrapes against Kara's throat. “I’m so, so sorry!”

For everything. For being Supergirl. For not being able to give her what she needed. For not being there sooner. For not staying at the hospital when Lena needed her most. For not finding Lex sooner. For any of this happening in the first place.

“S’okay…” Lena wheezes. Her fingers tighten by a fraction. “I'm... okay…”

“Lena?”

Sam awakens with a jolt, pulled from slumber by the sound of tears. She beams a watery smile of relief to find the distress she senses isn’t Lena’s.

Lena lifts her free hand weakly, and Sam captures it with both of her own. “Oh my god… Lena, baby-- you had me so scared.”

“S’rry…” She’s slurring now, and her eyes slam. Lena's features contort into a grimace. _“Hurts…”_

Sam reaches for the pain pump, only for Lena’s hand to tighten in alarm. Sam pauses. “Lena?”

“Please _..."_ Lena's apprehension shrinks her against the stark hospital linens. "I don't... don't..."

Dark circles live beneath her eyes and her skin is gray. Lena struggles to find her words, and when she comes up empty, tears of pain, and frustration, and fear slip down her cheeks.

Kara watches helplessly with her fingers still wrapped around Lena’s left hand, witness to a conversation that suddenly feels intimate. One that she no longer belongs to.

“We’ll still be here when you wake up again,” Sam promises, offering a small smile. Lena still hesitates, but Kara can hear her pulse increase as the pain continues to worsen.

“Please, baby. You don’t have to be in pain.” Sam presses a kiss to Lena’s knuckles and rests her cheek on the back of Lena’s hand. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

Lena’s throat works, but her voice is gone, lost to exhaustion and pain. Finally, she nods. When Sam presses the button, Lena's relief is nearly instantaneous. Lena’s eyes close heavily. This time, they remain shut.

Sam takes a ragged breath, staring at Lena for a long moment before turning her gaze to the room's only other visitor. Her lips press together as one hand lifts from Lena's to wipe her eyes.

“You’re Kara, aren’t you?”

Kara nods, frantically swallowing to clear the cloying sobs from her throat. “I’m sorry, I should have woken you.”

She clutches at Lena's hand, waiting for the inevitable request to leave.

“No, no-- I’m glad you’re here.” Sam offers a thin, but genuine smile. Exhaustion seems to coat every bone in her body, but a hopeful relief is starting to find a home in her too. “Lena doesn’t have many people.”

“No,” Kara agrees. Suddenly, she realizes she doesn’t know how much Lena has told Sam about them, about the relationship they used to have. If Lena has mentioned her at all...

“Can you stay?”

Kara's eyes flash wider, surprised by the question that comes instead outrage. An instant later, a fresh lump forms in her throat.

“No,” she chokes out. "I’ll be back, though. If... if that's okay."

“She’d like that.” Sam smiles again. “Lena hasn’t told me much about you-- sometimes I think she's about to, but instead she holds it tight. Like it’s precious to her.”

Kara freezes. She doesn’t know what to say. An apology hovers at the ready on her lips, but even that seems inappropriate.

“You’re important to her," Sam says. "Anyone important to Lena is important to me.”

There’s no guile in Sam’s gaze. She’s confident in Lena’s affection, in a way Kara realizes she never was. Had their positions been reversed, Kara would have been jealous, and not nearly so inclusive.

“You’re welcome here. Anytime. Please, come back soon, if you can.”

A knot in Kara's chest unravels, and it takes every ounce of her strength to keep her knees from buckling. Kara nods.

“Thank you.”

Sam smiles, but she doesn’t hear what Kara’s really trying to say.

_Thank you for being what Lena wanted. Thank you for being what she needs. Thank you for giving her the love she deserves._

_Thank you for making her happy._


End file.
